Court of Foxes

by Christianna Brand

  And a man’s voice shouted from the box and there was a clatter of hooves and the rattle and jingle of harness as the coach jolted to a halt; and outside the windows movement, confusion, a swarm of riders breaking cover and galloping on the small, rough, sure-footed ponies that so well she knew, across the river bank towards them, surrounding them. The nurse awoke with a shrill squeal of terror and clutched the baby to her breast, the old woman shot out a fat, mottled hand to catch at David’s arm; from the coach behind came the familiar high note of a woman beginning to scream. ‘Pouff, what a fuss! — it’s nothing to be afraid of,’ said Gilda, contemptuously. ‘We’re promised safety. They come but to pay their respects to me.’ She stood up to lean far out of the window and cried out for Dio, for Huw, for Willie-bach and Hal the Hop and Dai. But from behind her David said in a small, cold voice: ‘Gilda!’ and she turned her head.

  A blotting out of the light from the opposite window; and a darkness there that revealed itself as a tall figure, cloaked in black with a black mask through which two eyes glittered, steely blue. ‘Well, Madam Vixen — so we meet again! And this time it’s my turn.’

  The Black Toby.

  He was her friend of course — of course! Had he not been good to her, truly good, looking for no reward, in those days of Gareth’s imprisonment? But now… She said sharply, subsiding into her place, looking up at him, trying to hold fast to her waning self-confidence: ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I believed myself to be holding up a coach,’ he said, mockingly assuming doubt.

  ‘This coach has been promised safe conduct,’ said David angrily.

  ‘Not by me. And if you’re groping for a weapon, my lord, pray desist from it. I’ve taken the precaution to have mine more readily to hand.’

  Did the old woman, even in her extremity, find heart for one glance of triumph at her daughter-in-law? ‘You’re teasing me,’ said Gilda, not too certainly however. ‘These men with you are of Y Cadno’s gang.’

  ‘Who however lies four feet below the Oxford Road.’

  ‘Do you mean that you—? But you’re one that hunts with no pack,’ protested Gilda. ‘You’re one that rides alone.’

  ‘As you have good reason to remember, Madam Vixen,’ he assented, laughing. ‘A leopard may change his spots, however. I told you I had a fondness for this part of Wales; and so, since I was under an obligation — whose price you will recall? — not to ride in opposition to Y Cadno’s pack, why, what was there to do but to join them?’

  ‘And to lead them?’

  ‘I am like you,’ he said. ‘Not one to trot behind another less able than myself.’

  She was defeated. And yet — not quite defeated, never quite defeated while she held still that old power over men which had won him before and might yet win again. For such gold as they carried, for a few jewels, she cared nothing; but to have the old besom crow over her unsuccess in protecting them, to have Madame Blanche toss that corn-coloured nob of hers and smile her cool smile at the failure of her rival — that she would not endure. ‘What is it you want?’ she said at last: deliberately.

  ‘What is it you offer, Madam Vixen?’ he said — and laughed again.

  If David caught a hint of the meaning in her voice, he stifled his awareness; there was no mistaking however the undertones of the reply. He said as though to end the matter: ‘We carry little that is of value. Take what there is and let us go.’

  ‘On the contrary you carry a great deal that is of value — to me at any rate.’ The barrel of a pistol appeared in the window, a steady hand gestured with it briefly. ‘Come Madam Vixen — out!’

  David made an effort to launch himself forward but he was helpless, penned in between the women, struggling to get at a weapon which, since they had entered the Cothi valley he had, under promise of safe conduct, kept not easily within his reach. Gilda implored: ‘Keep still, don’t make matters worse!’ And she swore: ‘I know this man, he makes a grim joke of it but he’s a friend. You saw him, David, in the inn at Newgate. Was he not then our friend?’

  ‘Well said,’ said the Black Toby. He pulled off the mask, showing clearly in the evening light the keen, dark face and the brilliant eyes. ‘I am everybody’s friend. What is he afraid of?’

  ‘That you may become a little too friendly,’ said Gilda, coolly. ‘In short that you may carry off his wife and ravish her, which no doubt is in fact your intention.’

  He went off into roars of laughter and she thought guiltily that for months she had not heard such laughter — huge, free, untrammelled by the politenesses of society manners and mannerisms; a laughter that was against her and yet with her, affectionately indulgent and yet promising no particular indulgence if she came to resist him — a man’s laughter at the expense of a woman whom he could not help but admire and — a little — love. (So had that other one laughed in days when freedom and laughter had been commonplace.) ‘Why, Madam Vixen, what ideas you have! And yet, what good ones!’ The steely eyes peered into the interior of the coach. ‘Who have we here? Why, my lady the Dowager, no doubt? — your good mother-in-law. Come now, Madame Dowager, yours shall be the choice. Will you buy your safety and your son’s and that of your friends in the coach behind — at the expense of Lady Tregaron’s virtue?’

  The old woman stared back at him viciously, stared back and then turned away her head. ‘We could hardly trust to promises purchased at so low a price as that.’

  ‘David!’ cried Gilda, furious; but he had not heard, he was up now and out of his seat and had launched himself headfirst, weaponless, at the black-cloaked figure in the window. ‘You filthy brute, lay so much as a finger upon her—!’ He fought and struggled, bursting open the door, rolling out on top of the tall figure which, taken unaware by the suddenness of the onslaught, had tumbled over backwards with the violent pushing open of the door, into the road. Sam the Saddle ran up and Hal the Hop, limping, and hauled David off. ‘For heaven’s sake, good sir,’ said the Black Toby, getting up, still laughing, brushing himself down, ‘it was your lady mother said it — not I!’ But in the sudden small silence, while David stood, held back by two pairs of hands, he slowly swivelled round to face the coach again. ‘Why, Madam Vixen — what have we here?’

  She stood upon the step of the coach, behind her peering out the two anxious faces of the nurse and the Dowager; and now she held David’s pistol, aimed with a deadly menace at the heart of the Black Toby himself. ‘What we have here,’ she said, ‘is indeed Madam Vixen: and with her claws unsheathed. You perceive that I am armed.’

  He still laughed. ‘It was quite other arms I had intended.’ His own arms, nevertheless, were held well away from his coat pockets in earnest that he would not draw and attack.

  She stood there on the step: not taking her eyes from him, issued orders. ‘Dio — Huw! Get the women out of the other coach.’ Now that she had the upper hand, Miss Blanche should see whether she had ‘failed’ or not. And she waited till the golden head appeared, stooping to clear the low doorway; then she motioned, still watching him, with the butt of the weapon. ‘You want arms, sir — there’s a pair for you, as white as mine; and at least no more unloving.’

  David, still held fast by Hal the Hop, had forced his way round to stand close to her. ‘Gilda, for God’s sake—’

  ‘Hold your peace, David, and let your mother speak. Well, Madame,’ she cried back over her shoulder to the shuddering old woman behind her, ‘what say you now? You were ready enough to sacrifice my virtue — non-existent as you suggest — for your gew-gaws—’

  ‘Gilda, my mother said no such—’

  ‘Be quiet!’ she said angrily again and again motioned with the gun. ‘Come Mistress Blanche, come closer, let him look you over. It’s you or me. My Lord the Earl of Tregaron has preferred me: let’s see if you’ll be more fortunate with the highwayman!’ And she remembered: remembered the insults, remembered the broken promise, for it had amounted to no less — the cool little, chill, contemptuous nod across the gaping
faces of the playhouse audience — remembered that to force the humble curtsey that had made amends for it, Gareth y Cadno had died. ‘Now I’ll make you pay,’ she said in a voice of cold rage that astonished even herself. ‘I saw him dance on the gallows, I saw all his courage brought low — now you shall dance my fine lady, and we’ll see how your courage keeps up. As you danced that night in the moonlight, not a hundred yards from here and with your petticoats gone, so you shall dance again, when I bid you; and not once but a hundred times and for a larger audience and I promise you no more kind. For while I’m leader of this band…’ She broke off. She called out sharply: ‘Dio y Diawl — Catti, is that you standing there in the shadows? — Dio, Catti, Sam — this man who stands here at my pistol point — is this indeed your leader? Do you so acknowledge him? Of Y Cadno’s gang?’

  They were silent, shifting, not knowing how to reply. Dio spoke at last, his eyes questioning the others. He said: ‘He is not our leader — no.’

  ‘You hear that, Black Toby?’ she said; and lifted her voice and cried out, as she had cried long ago, perched on the great central boulder of the ring of rocks that had formed the council place of the Court of Foxes: ‘Who is your true leader?’

  Again the long silence; the exchange of glances. And Dio lifted up his head and said: ‘To us — after the Fox — you are still and ever our leader, Madam Lluinoges; our Madam Vixen.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Gilda, for God’s sake!’ pleaded David, at her side; helpless, held fast by Hal and by Huw who had moved round and joined them again. But she ignored him, lashed to a blindness of rage at the memory of that cool little nod across the playhouse, which for one terrible moment had revealed her to herself; and of the horror of its consequences to them all. ‘Very well. I am Y Lluinoges and I rule here. And while I rule, this woman shall pay. Slut and strumpet you called me, Mistress Blanche, you and all your kind, but you especially, crying it out for all to hear; slut and strumpet, those were the words he died to avenge.’ For this he had died, had lost in shameful captivity the bright, bold courage of the days of his freedom, for this he had surrendered all his pride. ‘Slut and strumpet. Well, you shall come to know what those words mean; for a slut and a strumpet you shall be indeed, Madam Blanche, and not in love to one man, but to any who’ll condescend to take you on the rough ground at the Court of Foxes, where I’ve seen many a woman tumbled in my time, for the amusement of the lookers-on… And pick yourself up and curtsey for the privilege, curtsey to me as you curtseyed that night and so sent him to his death…’ And she lifted up her hand and cried out: ‘Curtsey! Curtsey now! These are his people, curtsey to them, show them what it was he died for!’

  The lovely head bowed, the lovely corn-coloured head; like a swan folding its white wings, she sank down into the great, slow, single, undulating movement of the formal curtsey; and rose and stood, still as marble again. Beside the coach the old woman shuddered and moaned, her pale face staring, ugly with pain; within, the nurse sobbed and stared, clasping the child in her arms. At the second coach, two men held the Earl of Trove by the arms, feebly struggling, bleating out small agonised appeals; Jenny Coch had Anne by the wrist… ‘Gilda,’ said David, standing swaying by her side, so pale that he seemed about to faint, ‘can this be really you?’

  She was silent for a long moment. Then she said: ‘Perhaps it is; and I’ve never known it till now.’ The rage had gone; she said, muted, almost apologetic: ‘Because she wouldn’t curtsey to me, David — he hung there and died.’ And she listened for the answer — unable to believe that it did not come at once, that he did not respond to her without question in the old, kind, patient, all-embracing, enduring love. ‘David,’ she begged, ‘understand me, be patient with me…’ And so beseeching, turned her head to him.

  And the Black Toby sprang.

  Her attention had been not more than half deflected; almost before he moved, she had the pistol trained back upon him and, without a moment’s hesitation, fired point blank at him. But the ball flew past his arm and only tore his coat; and he laughed — but backed away from her, after all, and, moving faster and faster, came close to a gorse bush and dogged behind it. ‘Quick, after him!’ she cried; but they all seemed occupied, some at the horses’ heads, some with their weapons trained on coachmen and outriders, some holding the passengers, still; and no one followed her as she ran, her left hand holding back her skirt, the weapon steady in her right hand, flying down towards the bush where he stood. His teasing voice mocked at her from behind it — from her right as he dodged to the shelter of another — further to her right again. She followed him, skimming over the rough grass, bent only upon one thing — that she would be Vixen here and would brook no impostors. He won’t shoot me, she thought; I’m safe enough from that… What else he might do, she did not stop to reckon — that she could deal with one way or another as suited her best. But she would be Vixen here!

  And she passed a clump of alder and was in a small clearing; and from behind her a shape slipped out, shadowy, and caught her by the shoulders and turned her swiftly so that she stood close; and a hand in her hair yanked back her head and hard, fierce, painfully and yet wildly thrilling as it had ever been — a mouth came down upon hers.

  Those lips, that slender body, hard and taut, those arms of steel — she knew them, all too well.

  ‘Oh, Gareth, Gareth, Gareth y Cadno! — it can’t, it can’t be you?’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  OF THE BLACK TOBY — no sign. ‘A lure, Madam Vixen: I knew you’d not be able to resist the challenge of an intruder in my place — my place or yours, whichever you prefer to call it.’ And he laughed, looked down at her, dark, brilliant, mocking, so that her heart turned over with a longing to be caught in his arms again and held close and hard against his wicked heart. ‘He returns soon whence he came; but he’s been my good friend.’

  ‘Gareth,’ she said, ‘how can it be you? I myself saw you die.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ He shrugged it off. ‘You couldn’t think I’d quite so meekly deliver myself over to Jack Ketch?’

  ‘But I saw you — we all saw you. We saw you hanged, we saw you die!’

  ‘You saw another man die, wearing a green coat and clutching a bunch of roses — I having promised to care for his family, as I have done ever since. I have them here with me at the Cwrt.’

  She summoned up her old spirit. ‘A fine way of caring for them that is!’

  ‘He was a mere footpad; they’d have fared no better with him. And since he had to die, what matter how he did it? — if it meant help for those he left behind.’

  ‘But a dozen men died. There were twelve to be hanged and twelve were hanged for I saw them.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the turnkey stood in for me — hung in for me, if you prefer it so. Or rather — it’s all sadly complicated — for my friend the footpad who, in turn, was acting my part. If the turnkey would but have hugged a bunch of flowers and undertaken not to lift up his head, it might have been more simple; but we had to keep him deep in laudanum — I thank you for such liberal supplies! — or he might have proved less quiescent than he did in the end. Or so they tell me; I wasn’t there to see.’

  ‘Where were you, if one may ask; comfortably a-bed, no doubt, while we all broke our hearts for you.’

  ‘Why, and you guess right, my love; a-bed is just where I was.’

  ‘A-bed?’

  ‘Ay, but alas, alone — in Bart’s Hospital where such accommodation as a doxy’s not encouraged. They bundle you in with two or three, to be sure, but all, alas, of the same sex.’

  ‘You were in St Bartholomew’s Hospital?’

  ‘Come, sit down,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’ He took her hand and pulled her down beside him on the rough grass. ‘I was there in my part of the turnkey, don’t you see? We overpowered him — my friends in the Condemned Hole entering very kindly into the plot with me, for if they were to die, they might as well amuse themselves meanwhile any way they could; and he was a villainous fellow,
brought in especially for the work and a specialist in brutality. We forced laudanum down him and when he was senseless put him into my clothes and I got into his, inflicted upon myself some slight wound and cried out “Help! Help!” and, “I have been set upon!” and other such nonsense as would bring assistance running; and so was carried off to the hospital hard by, the poor fools quite satisfied with seeing the other lolling there wearing my green coat and in my accustomed condition — for I fed myself some handsome doses of the drug for many days, to allay suspicion. As I’ve said, the fellow was a stranger there, brought in especially upon my account and all I need do was bloody my face while they carried me away, lest anyone recognise me; and in the hospital complained of the light a good deal and there’s little enough of it anyway. My friends kept him deep in laudanum I suppose for the last hours, and so, too far gone to pipe up a word for himself, he’s carried off with the rest to the Nubbing Chit.’ He went off into gales of laughter. ‘Hung their own man, can you beat it? And I meanwhile, rose up quietly from my bed and thanked all concerned profusely, sent in my resignation at the prison, saying I dared serve no more after having been so vilely manhandled by its wicked inhabitants; and so went my ways

  ‘Not caring that you left me near on my death-bed with grief?’

  ‘Well, but you had your dear Dafydd to comfort you,’ he said coolly, ‘who, by your present good looks, appears to have succeeded very well.’

  She flared up angrily. ‘You show little gratitude for the fact that I — and he too — stood by you till the end; soaked in laudanum though you might be — might appear to be,’ she amended, conceding that much.